


Red

by ProphecyGirl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Dark, F/F, F/M, Gen, Kidnapping, Post-Chosen, Rape/Non-con Elements, Torture, Violence, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2891768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProphecyGirl/pseuds/ProphecyGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After “Chosen”, what’s left of the Watcher’s Council captures Faith as part of a plan to take over the newly activated Slayers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ammunition

> _In the distance is a line defining where I've been—the state I'm in_
> 
> _And ever since it began to slip from my two hands I've been_
> 
> _Taunting fires, touching wires, been believing liars._
> 
> _Everything they said, painted in red._
> 
> _I am fading in and out—_
> 
> _What are you gonna do?_
> 
> _Save me now, from this danger?_
> 
> _You don't know how._
> 
> _I'll find my way out when I'm in the red._
> 
> _Listening to strangers inside my head,_
> 
> _The darkening angels beneath the bed._
> 
> _I still see what you said._
> 
> _What are you gonna do?_
> 
> _No way for you to save me._
> 
> _\- Sara Bareilles, “Red”_

 

* * *

**Interlude: Present Time**

* * *

 

The thick leather cut into her wrists and ankles as she strained against them. Back arching, the fluorescent lights flickering and buzzing, filling her head as saliva and vomit filled her throat. Choking, gasping, something shoved in her mouth to keep her from biting off her tongue. The shocks coursed through her body, every muscle seizing and vibrating with an overflow of electricity.

She tried to think of a movie where she’d seen this once, but every time her thoughts caught a foothold in her mind they were vibrated away and replaced with lightning strikes. She tried to focus on the long strip of light above as it blurred and shook with every terrible, painful jerk of her limbs.

Pain gripped every inch of her body and she screamed into the bite plate uselessly, her face soaked with tears as she gave up struggling and sank against the bed. Her body went limp, her vision dark, and as a hand roughly removed the bite plate from her mouth, a single word came out as a breath of air in the second before she lost consciousness.

“ _Buffy_ …”

 

 

* * *

**Chapter One: Ammunition**

* * *

 

> _Don’t have a heart beneath this skin._
> 
> _Can’t break me, I’m already broken._
> 
> _Stained glass glowing in the light._
> 
> _-Jessi Robertson, "Stained Glass"_

The slick metallic taste on my tongue. The sound of their voices, far away and chanting, "Spin, spin, spin, spin..." like an angry mob.

Little Faith. She's always the first to do anything. At eight, I was the first one to dive into the pool beneath the quarry. At ten, I was the first one to climb the roof of an abandoned house and walk across unsteady beams that creaked and groaned beneath all 60-something pounds of me. I jumped into a tree just before the roof caved in.

And now, at twelve, I'm the first one to play this new game. It was Kyle's idea; to go into his stepdad's drawer and pull out the revolver he kept stashed there. We took out every other bullet and now they're all yelling for me to spin the cylinder and I do, then slam it shut. I cock the hammer and close my eyes.

Sweat drips down my forehead past my squinting eyes and down over my clenched jaw. Everyone is silent now, the sound of the breeze and the pounding of my heart the only thing I can hear. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. My face burns red and strands of my long wild hair stick to my neck.

It's summer in Boston. Maybe my last. Three bullets. Three empty spaces. There's a fifty percent chance of rain today, a fifty percent chance that I'll die today. One hundred percent sure that this is the dumbest thing I've ever done, but how can I back down now? I never back down.

From somewhere far away, a whispered voice says I don't have to do it and a few others agree. But there's Kyle, staring down the barrel at me and sneering, and I close my eyes again as his hand surrounds the grip. His index finger wraps around the trigger and my hands fall to my sides as I sit there on my knees with a gun in my mouth. The first tears start to fall and I think of all the things I won't get to do. Like be a seventh-grader. I shudder and he pulls the trigger.

Time stops. I picture my brains spilled across the sidewalk and insects crawling on my skin and up my nose. The trigger clicks and everyone gasps and all I can do is wonder when they'll find my body and how they'll know it's me and if anyone will even care.

Nothing happens.

I open my eyes slowly, and my so-called friends are staring at me, wide-eyed. I am alive and the air has never tasted so sweet before. Without pausing, I knock the gun out of his hand and punch him in the face. Kyle falls to the ground with a bloody nose, already crying, and I pick the gun up and kneel on his chest, staring into his wet eyes.

I press the barrel of the gun against the side of his head. He stops moving and stares back at me, his eyes wide. I can see the thoughts rolling over in his mind. Watch him realize that if there was no bullet when he fired it at my head, there’s a bullet now. I can see him doing the math, and I’m betting his survival chance for the day’s a lot lower than mine was. How crazy is this bitch, he’s thinking. Eighty percent crazy enough to shoot me? Ninety percent?

I cock the gun again and feel the warmth spreading across his denim legs as he wets himself in fear. I lean in close enough to feel his breath on my cheek and whisper in his ear.

“Bang.”

Kyle passes out, his face white as a sheet and his pants stained with a shame that will haunt him until the day he graduates, maybe longer. I climb off him and I de-cock the gun. I stick it it the waistband of my pants and spit on him as I walk away, every kid in the neighborhood watching me silently.

I keep the gun. Just in case.

 

* * *

 

I never found out what Kyle's stepdad did when he found his gun missing, and I never really thought about it too much either. Two years later, on the first day of high school, he jumped me as I cut across the football field. He pinned me to the ground, and it became clear that while I had only gained ten pounds, he'd gained quite a bit more. He was bigger and taller and no longer the snot nosed little boy that tried to kill me when I was twelve.

Now he was a high school junior, and I was at the edge of the football field where the weeds were all overgrown and no one could see me. It was like Russian Roulette all over again--I was sweating and scared and frozen in place. I thought he was going to beat me up, to prove to everyone that he was better than trashy little Faith who kicked his ass but good as a kid.

"Get the fuck off me," I say firmly, not shouting, not showing my fear. Never show them your weakness.

Without warning his hand travels down my side to my thigh while the other goes around my neck and pins me to the ground. I can barely breathe when I feel his fingertips sliding under my skirt and brushing against my brand new underwear. Now I understand. He wants what Daddy wanted. What mom’s new boyfriend Gable wants. What all men want. Everybody wants a piece of me, and when he tears into my underwear and puts his fingers inside me I wonder if there will be enough of me left after he takes some, too.

After a long time, he leaves and I am left behind like a broken rag doll, sprawled across the grass with fingertips bruised into my neck and invisible handprints on my body. I'm bleeding a little, so I pull myself up and gather the remnants of my clothes and stumble home, occasionally falling and scraping myself up even worse. It's like my feet aren't connected to my brain anymore.

When I get home, I know I made a mistake because Gable calls me a slut and screams at me. Wants to know who I've been fucking. He drags me into my bedroom by my ear and throws me to the bed and I think again of the gun tucked away under my mattress and how I'm going to use it on him as soon as I'm ready.

He boxes my ears and starts punching me in the gut, causing me to fold in half and scream into my pillow. He rolls me over and slaps me, splitting my lip. Fucking little whore. Slut. I'll tan your ass but good. He throws me down and starts pumping in and out of me and I float away somehow. Like I'm watching it from outside my bruised, helpless body.

He drops me to the floor when he's done with me and before I pass out, I realize how far away the bed seems from down here.

 


	2. Locked

The grass is prickly and still wet with morning dew when they let me out into the courtyard. That’s what they call it, anyway, but I’ve never seen a courtyard with 12-foot-high electric fences. They used to be wrought iron, very old school, with barbed wire on top. They learned fast, though.

I slashed open my hands and thighs when I escaped. Ran bleeding through the woods and heard the dogs and the men and the guns behind me. The cluttered ground ripped the pads of my feet to shreds and I knew it was over, knew the scent of my blood would pull the dogs in whatever direction I went, but I couldn’t give up. Even when they had cornered me, the dogs nipping at the cuts on my feet and thighs as I lay curled on the ground, bleeding from the bullet that hit my knee, I screamed and kicked with my good leg as my body vibrated with the pain of the hot metal in my flesh. I beat my heel and my fists against the bodies that restrained me even as they injected me with something that knocked me out, refusing to back down.

I _never_ back down.

After that, I watched through the barred windows as a crew tore down the gates and replaced them with the electrified bars that I learned quickly would stop my heart if I touched them. There was no escaping that way. Nor, Quentin had assured me, was there escaping any other way. Even if the dogs and the men and the guns didn’t get me, the woods would. Hundreds of miles in every direction. Not even a road, he told me. I should be honored that it took a private plane to get anyone out here. And trust him, he said, nobody on any of those planes was going to help me. This was it, this was my life now, and it’d be easier for everyone if I just got used to it.

What do I have to look forward to, then, I asked him. Why shouldn’t I hang myself with a sheet or grab that electric fence and hold on until every last cell in my body was thoroughly fried and destroyed, my body ready for the worms. Why not, why not? It’s not like I’m scared of death, I taunted him. I’d rather be dead than be your pet.

He nonchalantly sipped a glass of scotch and smiled a little bit, patiently explaining that even if I should manage to outsmart them and achieve the foolish goal of killing myself, there were shamans and witches and all sorts of dark magic. He spun me a future of being strapped to a bed, killed with electrodes, my heart stopped for a full minute before bringing me back. He said they would do it over and over and over, see how many slayers they could activate. Build an army to rival the one we built in Sunnydale, an army under Council control. Rip your precious Buffy to shreds and feed her to the dogs, he promised.

I must have gone pale and he knew he’d hit a sore spot, my Achilles heel. Oh yes, he told me. We know all your secrets. We know everything. We even know how you told her it didn’t mean anything to you, and you were just feeding a need after the big battle in Sunnydale. She was nothing to you, a convenient fuck is all. We know how hurt she was, and how much you wanted to admit your lie. But it was better for her to move on, that’s the lie you told yourself. Better this way for both of you, right? You think when you moan her name in the middle of the night, that you’re dreaming of a future that will ever happen? The life you’ll never have? Isn’t it enough that you broke her heart? Do you really want to be the reason we break her body, too?

I squat down and run my fingers over the damp grass. My life is hell. I’m stuck in hell and nobody cares. The one person who did care, I pushed away so hard she probably uses my name as a dirty word now, if she uses it at all.

I’m not stupid. I know everything Quentin said he’d do, he would. With or without me, he would find Buffy and conquer her and take out whoever helps her. The council would rule over the Slayer line once again, and nobody was going to stand in their way. What kept me from that fence was time. If I could stay alive and out of chains, there might be an opening someday. Some way I could at least warn her of what’s coming. Give her time to prepare for it, maybe even make a preemptive strike.

I know that I am going to die here. I don’t have any delusions of escape or freedom or anything good ever again. Maybe they shocked hope out of me too—who knows? But I can do one last thing, at least. I can tell Buffy what’s going to happen, and I can tell her that I lied—that she’s anything but nothing to me. I just need the right opening. Someday, one of them will make a mistake. Leave me in reach of a phone or a computer. I know it will happen, and I have to be ready when it does. Not sedated and shocked into compliance—clear-headed enough to know when it’s time to strike. I need to warn her. I need to make up for some of the bad. And until then, I need to protect her the only way I can now—by letting them hurt me any way they want and pretending that I’m breaking without actually doing it.

 

So I wait.

 


	3. Primer

* * *

**Interlude: Present Time**

* * *

  
Her eyes blinked open slowly after awhile, and she stared blankly at the faces around her. Large hands gripped her and eased her off the bed into a wheelchair. She sat staring dully ahead as they went slowly down the hallway. A thin string of drool stretched from her lips to her lap and her hands jerked every so often.  
  
The man pushing the wheelchair stopped it after awhile and easily lifted her up into another bed. The welts on her back and the backs of her thighs stung as he laid her down, but the pain was a friendly thing now—it reminded her that she was still alive, although she couldn’t remember why that was important. The man with the big hands pressed a straw to her mouth and slowly her mouth remembered how to drink and she guzzled the water desperately until he pulled it away. A small pinch in her arm, a cool rush beneath her skin that made everything heavy.  
  
Slowly, she ran her tongue over her cracked lips, wetting them and continuing to stare glassily at the stone walls that formed her cell. She knew she was supposed to remember something, but she couldn’t remember what she couldn’t remember, and whatever the man with the big hands had given her in that needle made everything feel friendly and slow and a little sleepy. Her eyelids were really heavy and the pillow was so soft, like a cloud. Maybe if she let herself float away on it, she’d remember what she forgot. She gave in, letting the softness carry her into a dreamless sleep.  


* * *

**Chapter Three: Primer**

* * *

  
  
Night fell, and shadows danced on the walls as the wind howled and shook the trees to their very roots. I dig my toes into the soft plushy carpet, curling them and releasing them slowly, over and over. My fingernails are ragged from ripping them apart with my teeth and my arms are covered in bruises from being grabbed and yanked around. Looking around the room, I mentally make a note of where every item that could be a weapon is. Fire poker, glass bottle, katana on the wall. Chair legs are always good, but I doubt I’ll have time to snap one off before there are hands around my neck.  
  
I sit quietly and go over each and every day of my captivity in my head. I’ve been biting myself until the blood comes, marking my time on the wall of my cell, but I can’t see it right now so I can’t know for sure. It makes me anxious, not knowing, not being able to see my wall. My blood, counting out the days of my life. Wondering how many are left. The constant threat of pain and death ahead of me. The pain doesn’t bother me anymore, at least. Truth be told, it never bothered me that much to begin with—a little pain is a good thing, reminds you that you’re alive when you think you might be dead. So am I alive? Or am I dead?  
  
“Look at all those thoughts floating around inside that pretty little head. I can practically see the hamster running on its wheel.” Quentin Travers sits in the armchair opposite me and pours two glasses of whiskey, offering one to me. “Take it.” I take the glass, but hold it on my lap. I need to be clear, I need to pay attention. “It’s Johnnie Walker Blue,” he says. “Roughly $300 a bottle. You really shouldn’t waste it. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead.”  
  
He does have a good point, and the smell of the alcohol is a huge improvement over the stench of my unwashed body. I lift the glass and take a sip, closing my eyes briefly as it warms my insides on the way down. It suddenly strikes me how ridiculous this entire situation is. Me, covered in blood and dirt and god only knows what else, sitting in this overstuffed armchair in an actual sitting room, fire roaring beneath the hearth, swallowing a 50$ sip of whiskey.  
  
“You have to be wondering why you’re here.”  
  
I let myself have one more sip before setting the glass down. Clear, I have to be clear. I have to be alert and look for an opening. I judge the space between myself and the fire poker, but I won’t make it in time. I scan the room for better options as he continues talking. “We don’t wish to hurt you, Faith.”  
  
For the first time, I meet his eyes—cold and dead, stony and hollow—and a hard laugh escapes my lips. “Really? I must’ve gotten the wrong impression when you strapped me down and _electrocuted_ me. When you sent your goddamn dogs after me, when you shot me.”  
  
He waves his hand dismissively while sipping from his glass. “Means to an end, Faith. We need your cooperation. It will be easier for everyone if you give it voluntarily, but we will have it regardless.” His voice is so calm that it sets me on edge. I know this game, know he’s trying to put me at ease. Come off like the friendly grandfather doing something for my own good. I want to launch out of the chair and claw at him until his face comes off in shreds beneath my nails, but the whiskey is hitting me and I feel heavy and soft.  
  
“Good,” he says softly, watching me. “Let the anger go. Give in, let yourself relax a little.” His voice starts to lull me and I really wish I hadn’t accepted the glass. My mind is growing fuzzy.  
  
“What do you want with me? Why am I here? We both know you’re not interested in ‘rehabilitating’ me. You want to get to Buffy, you shoulda taken just about anyone in the world except me. I’m the one person she won’t miss, won’t look for.” It hurts to say those words, but it’s the truth. Not after what I did to her, what I said to her. The way I threw her away like a piece of trash.  
  
“Is this what you believe, truly?” He sounds like a snake now, his voice low and hissing. A smirk behind that relaxed face. He’s drunk, but not on his stupid three hundred dollar whiskey. No, he’s drunk on power. I recognize it like a junkie recognizes heroin.  
  
“Yeah,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. “Yeah, it is.”  
  
He nods a little. “Tell me what you remember, Faith.”  
  
My eyes go to the fire poker again, and I allow myself a minute to fantasize. I’d pick it up, crack it across the side of his head like a home run. Stand over his body on the floor as I drive the sharp end into his chest, over and over again. Feeling and hearing his ribs as they snap, standing in my bare feet as his blood pools around me. Fuck you, I would breathe to his dying body. Bang! I’d be the one drunk on power then. I’d be the one capable of causing such enormous pain.  
  
“Faith.”  
  
I close my eyes for a minute and when I open them, the world is a little softer around me. The alcohol is really taking hold, plus whatever the fuck they’ve been injecting into me. I don’t even want to fight anymore. The poker taunts me from the corner, mocking me for being too weak and tired and soft to grab it. I hear it whisper in my head, _you are weak; you are nothing. You deserve this. Every bit of it. You made your own bed, psycho bitch. Loser. Slut. Murderer. Trash._  
  
He raps his hand on the side table and I snap my vision back to him. “Tell me what you remember.”  
  
“About what?” I don’t know what he wants. Why the fuck am I here.  
  
“About Sunnydale. Tell me about Sunnydale.”  
  
I feel my body relax against the chair. The comfort and warmth of the chair, the booze, this room, his voice. I fade a little. “I.. I ran away after Diana died.” The name of my Watcher feels strange on my tongue. I haven’t spoken of her in years and years. I tried so hard to forget. Just another failure. More evidence that my calling was a wrong number.  
  
“No, you stupid girl,” Quentin snaps, putting his glass down hard and leaning forward a little bit. “Tell me about the final battle. The potentials, the First. Tell me what happened, how you did it.”  
  
My head swims and I try to remember. All I can pull up are bits and pieces mixed with memories of my body seizing beneath the lights. “There was.. a weapon, of some kind. A big.. axe thing.”  
  
“The scythe.” He’s relaxed again now that I’m cooperating.  
  
“Yeah. We.. found it. Somewhere. Beneath the ground. I—I don’t remember. Buffy found it, brought it home, showed it to me.”  
  
“Because you were injured, yes? An explosion of some kind.”  
  
I nod slowly. I think that’s right. “Willow did something the day we went into the.. uh.. the.. the hole in the ground..”  
  
“The seal,” he prompts me gently.  
  
“The seal. We went in it, and Willow did something with the scythe, and.. everyone.. turned into slayers.” I shake my head a little, trying to remember. It’s all patchwork, half-frayed memories stitched together, mismatched and full of holes. Things are missing and I don’t know why.  
  
He’s impatient now, fingers drumming the arm of his chair. “What did Willow do with the scythe?”  
  
I shake my head. I don’t know. I never knew, really. Of all the weird shit in the world, witchcraft was the thing I knew the least about. “A spell of some kind.”  
  
He leans forward again, his cold dead eyes burning into mine. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”  
  
“I can’t. I don’t _know_ what she did, how it worked. Sh-she did a spell with the scythe, and the power, the Slayer power, it went through us. All of us. I felt it. We shared the power somehow.”  
  
Quentin gets up and starts pacing. He’s agitated, a tiger in a cage. I don’t know what he wants, just that I haven’t given it to him. I can’t give it to him, and I’ve still got my wits about me enough to be happy about it. No matter what they do to me, I can’t tell them what they want to know. Now I can see his mind working and spinning, trying to figure me out. Trying to decide if I’m lying, if I’m screwing with him. Now I’m agitated. I bounce my good leg up and down nervously and against my better judgement, I take another sip from the glass. Watching him pace is sending my anxiety through the roof. I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin.  
  
I snap. “Look, I don’t know what the fuck you want from me, but I was too busy killin’ uber vamps to worry about what the fuck Willow and Kennedy were doing. I wasn’t there.”  
  
He stops. Looks at me.  
  
“The witch wasn’t alone?”  
  
It hits me slowly, but in one sucker-punch. He didn’t know. He didn’t know. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to capture one of the strongest witches to ever live. But a second-string Slayer? If they caught me, Kennedy would be no problem. And now I’ve served Buffy and every one of the girls up to the council on a silver platter.  
  
I can see the bloodlust in his eyes. I just gave him what he wanted. An opening, a path. I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know, but Kennedy can. And after they’ve held a blowtorch to her eyeball a few times, she definitely will.  
  
A smile spreads over his face and he motions to the men sitting on a couch in the corner. They rise immediately and move towards me. My entire body freezes up as they grab me, ignoring my pulling and pushing. I can’t help it; I start screaming. They keep going anyway, carrying me out of the room. They drag me backwards and I stop twisting in their grasp long enough to watch Quentin watching me, his face hungry with power, a wicked grin stretched across his lips. I keep screaming as the doors shut and I am dragged away, beating the floor with my heels. I try desperately, jerking and twisting away from them until I hear the sickening pop as my shoulder comes out of the socket. The pain blinds me momentarily and the men carrying me laugh as I cry.  
  
There’s no reason to keep me alive now. They will kill me; of this I’m certain. I’m useless to them now. They’ll get rid of me, and they’ll capture Kennedy and they’ll find out what they need to know, and then Buffy and the school will fall, crumbling like a demolished building before the Council swoops in to build over it.  
  
And it will all be my fault.  
  
What have I done?


	4. Doubletap

* * *

Chapter Four: Doubletap

* * *

I wake, but my eyelids are too heavy to lift. I try to orient myself anyway, but I can’t. The air around me smells damp and dirty. I don’t know why or even if I’m still alive, but I need to know so I put as much effort into opening my eyes as I can. I blink a few times slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. I can make out a shadow a few feet away, but its the low moan that snaps me back to myself.

I know that moan.

I push myself up slowly, the world spinning a little, my eyes crossing for a minute and showing every shadowy outline two or three times. My head is throbbing, but I know that moan so I slide out of my cot and slowly shuffle in the direction it came from. I stop when I see the huddled shadow in the corner.

A dark curtain of tangled hair frames Kennedy’s face. A large but well-healed scar runs at a diagonal across her face from chin to cheek, crossing her pale lips. She stares ahead blankly, her eyes empty except for fear.

“Ken?” Her lip trembles, but her eyes continue to stare past me. I lower myself to the floor, ignoring the pain that spikes through me as my knee hits the ground.

“Kennedy.. can you talk?” Slowly her eyes scan the wall until she’s looking at me, but there’s no reaction. No dilated pupil, no glimmer of recognition. Her skin is pale, nearly white, and peppered with small, circular scars. They look like cigarette burns, like the ones I have crossing my ribs. I’ve only got three. Gable used to hit me in the same places over and over again, refusing to let his marks heal, like he somehow thought if they healed I wouldn’t be his anymore. Even fully clothed I count dozens on her. She shivers, the hair on her arms prickling up around bruises and cuts. I look behind her, already knowing what I’ll see, and wince at the lines of blood streaking across her shirt in the shapes of the welts beneath it.

Her pain runs so deep that I can practically taste it on my tongue, bitter and stale. I did this. I told them what she knew; I may as well have snapped the whip across her back over and over again myself. Every drop of blood she’s spilled is on my hands, and I lean away from her as I get sick, my stomach twisting up with guilt deep in my gut.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to her with a choked sob. She doesn’t give any indication that she can even hear me, not a flutter of the eyelashes or a single breath out of rhythm. “What did they do to you?” She doesn’t answer, of course, but she doesn’t need to answer.

Just as I feel myself bubbling over with guilt and regret so strong that it threatens to consume me, I hear the familiar moan again and it’s a sucker-punch in the gut. I stand, shaking, and approach the sound slowly, wanting to be wrong more than I’ve ever wanted anything else in my life.

A bit of light reflects off her hair. She’s curled into a ball on the cot, whispering to herself and I can see blood soaking through the white sheet wrapped around her. I can’t believe it, don’t want to believe it.

“B?”

The form under the sheet gasps and jerks with fear as she rips the cloth off herself, scrambling off the cot and shrinking back against the wall; then I gasp. Her face is pale and gaunt and covered in gashes, a line of stitches stretching across the side of her forehead and past where her hair line would have been if they hadn’t shaved it to stitch her. Tear tracks streak paths through smudges of dirt, and her left eye is puffy and purple and half swollen shut. Her bottom lip is bloodied and she sits against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, staring at the floor. She rocks herself almost imperceptibly and whispers at a volume only a Slayer could hear.

“It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.”

I crouch a foot away from her, moving slowly and whispering her name again. She stops rocking; stares at me like she doesn’t recognize me. “It’s real,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry, but it’s real.” She just stares back at me, her face a mixture of terror, confusion, and fear.

“It can’t be.” she whispers plaintively.

“Why not?”

She blinks slowly, staring at me dumbly, but her voice is matter-of-fact when she answers.

“Because you’re dead.”

 


	5. Loaded

* * *

Chapter Five: Loaded

* * *

 

 

> _Save me. Save me from myself._
> 
> _Drowning in the wishing well._
> 
> _I will try to rise above._
> 
> _I am never good enough._
> 
> _I want you to know that I needed time alone._
> 
> _Don't you try to tell me that you really didn't know._
> 
> _All I ever wanted was to never leave this bed._
> 
> _And I want to tell the truth - my smile is just pretend._
> 
> _\- Bif Naked, “After Awhile”_

 

 

Fourth of July. The flashing lights soaring and exploding above our heads. Golden blasts sinking down to the breaking shore and lighting the sky and earth on fire with a brilliant technicolor glow. The sizzling embers scalding the sand as bells rang high from the hilltops and filtered up from the valleys and across the country Americans sat and considered the cost of their freedom, the spilled blood of the fearless warriors, all ghosts of the distant past now.

It passed us by, our heartbeats matching the ebb and flow of the ocean before us. She looked as though she belonged in the ocean, as though she were a part of it. Sand coated her golden sun-scorched body, glistening from flaxen head to long toes, stretching and curling and dipping into the salty water. My sunburnt wheat-field city girl mermaid, wrapped in a chrysalis of sand grains and clothing. She didn’t belong here. She truly belonged in the wild, finding her way through the tangly slimy slippery seaweed kelp reaching out to wrap their wild tendrils around her slim ankles. Past dozens of schools of electric rainbow fish, the snapping clams and docile bottom-dwellers.

I drowned when I was two. They say you can't remember back that long, but I can.

My father took me to the beach and waded into deep water and he held me tight and he held me closer and just when I felt safe he dropped me.

'Swim, baby, swim!' he told me. Swim and breathe and flap and float and the water was murky and deep. Salt stung my eyes and tender nose and throat, barely used to the air of the earth yet, and here she is. Pale dirt-baby in Mother Earth's womb, twisting and tangling in the gripping grabbing plants, trying to clutch to Daddy’s legs but they moved.

The darkness faded, my body limp, my lungs soaked as he lifted me against his chest and kissed my peachy-fuzz head and patted my chubby chunky thighs. I learned to breathe again, and the sun warmed my near-frozen baby's limbs.

Just when I felt safe, just when I trusted him and started to forget, he dropped me again. I was angry this time, I was terrified and livid, a blast of fire and rage coming from my chest where my heart pounded frantically. I kicked and punched and bit and the ends of my thin soft Johnson & Johnson's hair flashed in front of my eyes. I was an animal, I would rip into the water until it released me and then the sun was on my face again, and Daddy laughed and smiled and clapped and he picked me up, still clawing and tearing like a jungle cat, like a baby panther.

He wasn’t teaching me to swim after all; he was teaching me something much more important: that nobody, not even my own flesh and blood, could be trusted. He taught me that if trusting someone the first time around was stupid, then it was even more so to trust someone a second time. He taught me that in the end, everyone would turn their backs on me.

He taught me that the only person I could depend on was myself.

* * *

 

The fireworks burst and streaked across the sky above. The bonfire cracked and sizzled, lighting the entire stretch of beach. I watched the girls running across the sand, tagging each other and throwing a ball back and forth between them. The smell of the salty air mixed with the scents of hot dogs and marshmallows cooking, and I soaked it all up while laying beside the fire, the log under my head a hard but comfortable pillow.

Kennedy dropped to the ground beside me and handed me a stick with a toasted marshmallow on the end.

“You looked like you could use a sugar high.” She leaned back against the log and I smiled as I bit into the crispy sugar.

“I figured you and Red woulda snuck off to a more.. private.. part of the beach by now.”

Kennedy smirked. “I could say the same about you and Buffy, yunno.” I shrugged, polishing off the marshmallow and stabbing the stick into the sand. I wasn’t even sure where Buffy was at the moment. Ken frowned a little. “Trouble in paradise?”

I shook my head. “No. No trouble. I think ‘paradise’ might be pushin’ it, but. It’s not every day we get to hang out on the beach, watch fireworks, chill at a bonfire..”

“Have fun.” Kennedy supplied quietly. I nodded. Fun was at a serious premium since Sunnydale. We had all been trying so hard to keep busy; planning and discussing and looking to the future. Doing anything we possibly could to keep ourselves from remembering the cost of _our_ freedom. The freedom every one of us now had; the freedom to choose to be a Slayer or not to be a Slayer. A freedom that came on the backs of our friends, our sisters. The dead that lay deep beneath the earth where Sunnydale once stood. Children who would never return to their parents; names no one but us would ever know. Lives we would all carry with us forever.

 

We all took solace however we could; comfort wherever we could find it. For Buffy and I, that meant fucking as much as possible for as long as possible. Everything that happened was balanced on her delicate shoulders; all of the loss, all of the pain. There was something deeply fucked up about the fact that we were surrounded by Slayers now and more lonely than ever. But every day it became clearer that there was something different about the newly-activated girls. The truth was they weren’t ever going to be Slayers the way we were. They weren’t ever going to feel that slight buzzing, tingly feeling deep in their guts that I felt any time B and I were close. They lived in a world where being a Slayer meant being part of something bigger than yourself. Our slogans weren’t much different from the slogans used by the Marine Corps. A warrior family that promised to have your back until the day you died. Semper fi.

These girls would never know what being alone was.

So when B came back up the beach, skin golden and her eyes empty, and took my hand, I stood and walked with her silently. Laying together on a blanket on the sand, covertly tucked away behind the dunes on the other side of the jetty, I watched the sweat trickling down her face, reflecting the moonlight and pressing her feet into the sand. I entered her slowly and our hearts pounded hard in unison as her back arched, the crashing waves swallowing her gasps. She came hard, her hand clutching my hair, and as one we rolled over together, her hands already mapping their way across my skin. Goosebumps prickled up and down my body and I let myself let go, floating away but somehow more anchored to my body, to the earth, to _her_ , than ever.

Afterwards, I lay panting and let her curl against me. Her cheeks were still flushed, her hair wild, and she looked alive. She always did after.

A few days later, she told me the only time she felt alive was with her skin pressed to mine. She told me nobody would ever understand her the way I did. And then she told me she loved me.

Every night after that, my dreams were full of sensations that would be tied to that moment for as long as I lived—the cool air sweeping over my skin as she got up. The dampness of the tears that landed on my arm when she whipped her head back towards me, ripping her arm from my grasp. The empty, barren feeling inside me as she slammed the door behind her. The gnawing, relentless guilt over the lies I told her to make her leave spreading across every inch of my body. I tried to tell her that I didn’t know how to love, but like every feeling I ever had in my life, it came out of me in a tumble of acidic bile and rage and hate.

And then the dark thing inside me that had pushed her away and made sure she would never come back, grew bigger and bigger until it swallowed me whole.

 

* * *

Interlude: Present Time

* * *

 

Shadows dance lazily across the walls in the dim moonlight. Branches reaching up, coiling around the light fixtures. I blink slowly, watching the tendrils as the bowl I just smoked starts to kick in. It seeps into me slowly like a rising tide. Muscles going limp. Everything becoming softer, more gentle. I lift my arm a little and it tingles. Start scratching at the healed slashes across my wrist. So angry. Pull the scab off, blood's dripping now. I do this three more times, wrenching open the most recently-healed cuts.

The blood rolls gently down my arm and I grow calm as a memory comes back. A dark place. Alone, lungs fighting for breath. Then another memory, this one dingy and overexposed—everything dishwater grey, the paint on the walls cracked and peeling. Yellowed fluorescent lights buzzing quietly above. Padded cuffs anchoring my body to a bed, my back arching as I screamed wildly and struggled against them.

I go to sleep, and when I sleep I dream about a soft, dark green carpet beneath my feet as I stand at the side of a casket. I lay a rose on the closed lower lid, and I apologize in a whisper, my voice shaking just a little. I apologize and I take a breath and I finally look into the coffin.

My own face stares back at me, and suddenly I can’t stop screaming.


	6. Blowback

* * *

Chapter Six: Blowback

* * *

 

 I’m awake, but my eyes are closed, my lids heavy, eyelashes glued together with dried tears.

 

 _Where am I_?

 

It was dark, and there was so much blood. My eyes don’t want to open, so I focus on the blood in my mind, dragging my gaze over it slowly and trying to remember where it led. I see bruised, dirty legs slightly splayed where they stuck out underneath a dingy white sheet. It all hits me at once. _Buffy_.

 

There was so much blood, and I force myself to open my eyes, fighting the urge to give in and let them close again and forcing them to focus on the edge of the sheet until it sharpens. I try not to blink, knowing that if I allow my eyes to close they won’t open again. I look around slowly, my eyes scanning the shapes and shadows. I part my cracked lips, and I mean to say her name but all that comes out is a quiet rush of breath. My throat and mouth are sandpaper, my tongue swollen and parched.

 

_What happened?_

 

I think of my hand cupping Buffy’s cheek, trying to reassure her I wasn’t dead. She told me what happened. That they’d found my body hanging from the closet rod. Covered in scars, the smell of alcohol thick on my dead lips and still emanating from the few drops left in the bottle on the nightstand. Nothing but dust left in the pill bottle next to it.

 

* * *

 

Faith’s eyes stared emptily back at her, her skin already gaining a grey pallor. Ligature marks marred her skin across her throat, outlining the rope that had strangled the life out of her. She touched Faith’s hand and was surprised by how warm it still was. Flashes of an ambulance with an exhausted but living Faith on it went through her mind. Faith in a hospital bed, thanking her for saving her life. She watched in silence as they cut her down and pretended she’d gotten here in time to stop it.

 

She’d know Faith didn’t mean those things, somewhere inside. They’d hurt the same, though, and Buffy tried desperately to convince herself that Faith had been being an asshole, that anyone would have walked out after that, that she hadn’t done anything unnecessarily cruel. None of it mattered, though. It didn’t matter that she knew Faith was full of shit, that she was scared, that she was angry. She knew that Faith’s proclivity towards converting every emotion into anger was just the result of the pneumatic device that was her brain, pumping out gallons of rage per second. She was hurt, so she slammed the door and she left. She couldn’t have stayed away long. She knew that and she took for granted that Faith knew that, too. That Faith knew she’d come back anyway, that whatever it was that brought them together over and over again wouldn’t let them stay apart for too long. She thought Faith knew she’d be back.

 

But now Faith was here on the floor in front of her, her eyes unseeing, her skin already starting to cool. Her clothes were soiled and Buffy felt sick and part of her wanted to run again, but she only clutched Faith’s hand tighter, mentally counting all the different ways she could have stopped this.

 

In the days and weeks that followed, Buffy grew increasingly angry that nobody would listen to her. Faith wouldn’t do that. Faith wasn’t a coward. Faith wouldn’t give up. Faith never backs down. Why would Faith take a bunch of pills _and_ hang herself when either one on their own would have been sufficient? Question after question, like a dog with a bone Buffy rattled around the building telling anyone who would listen that something about this whole situation stank like hell. People just looked at her with pity, like they could see her guilt tattooed across her face. She insisted that something else had to have happened, but even she couldn’t argue with the obvious long history of self-abuse written in the multitude of scars across Faith’s body, and one day she stopped storming into Giles’ office and demanding he look harder for the truth. One day, she too gave up and though her own body continued to move, everything inside her that mattered was dead too.

 

* * *

 

And then they’d come. Pried us apart, forced me to the ground as they dragged her screaming, flailing form away. I struggled in a way I hadn’t in months, forcing the skeletal body I now inhabited to push back, my arms reaching for her even as I felt the needle slide into my flesh and everything faded away, my eyes shutting against my will over the tears.

 

I force my body to sit up despite feeling like every inch of me is weighted down with sandbags, and everything is upright for only a few seconds before I focus in on the legs, twisted at an unnatural angle. Too much blood, there’s way too much blood and I know nobody could survive that much loss. Adrenaline pounding in my ears, I grab the edge of the cot, the wall, a chair. I pull myself over to her body and the drugs slow me down like I’m walking in the ocean, each step taking an agonizingly long time. I finally reach the cot and, shaking, I reach a hand out, touching her leg and praying I’m wrong.

 

But I’m not. The cold, pale flesh that greets me sends a shock through my system, and I suddenly know exactly how Buffy felt when she watched them cut my body down. The world pitches beneath me, everything spinning and dancing, the walls melting down as I fold deep inside myself. Somewhere in the distance I can hear someone screaming and I think it’s me, but who can be sure? How can I be sure of anything anymore? And what does any of it matter anyway?

 

Buffy’s dead. **Nothing** matters anymore.

 

I slide to the ground with a wail and curl into a ball, the last of the sedative losing the battle against my body’s visceral reaction. I press my cheek against the concrete, soaking up the cold and feeling whatever hope and humanity was left inside me leave my body. For half a second I think that might be enough, but it’s not and before I even realize I’m doing it, I bang my head against the floor. The pain feels good; real. I can hold onto this. I do it again. And again, and again, and again. I let out a guttural scream and pick up the pace, slamming my head against the cold floor over and over. I feel the skin of my forehead split and the blood runs warm and wet down my face, past my eyes, mixing with tears.

 

I scream and scream and slam and slam and I bleed as I become pure, unfiltered hate. The blood runs down my cheeks, touches my chapped lips, and I’m so relieved that something, anything at all, is real, that I feel my face stiffly spread into a smile. I keep going as I hear the familiar sound of the jangling keys, several voices calling out and barking orders. Hands go around my arms, my legs, my head. They press me to the ground and I arch up, spittle and frothy blood spraying as I struggle violently against them.

 

I vomit and start choking and the hands roll me onto my side, thumping my back, trying to clear my airway. I bite down on a finger and hear a shrill male shriek. The bloody finger recedes and the last thing I hear before I feel the sharp pinch of a needle hitting my neck is the same voice calling me a bitch.

 

The drug spreads through my body with a warm feeling and I sink against the ground. I don’t want to let them think they won, think they conquered me. Not now, when I have nothing at all left to lose. Through the haze of the drug taking my system over, I slowly lift up my right hand. It feels like I’m pushing against quicksand, but I mumble, my words garbled as the drugs pull me deeper.

 

“Sorry ‘bout your finger.. you can have mine..” I force my middle finger up and let my lips spread into a small smile, and I know it was worth it when the guy I bit howls with rage. It’s the last sound I hear before I slip into grateful darkness.


	7. Double Feed

_In the distance is a line defining where I've been—the state I'm in_   
_And ever since it began to slip from my two hands I've been_   
_Taunting fires, touching wires, been believing liars._   
_Everything they said, painted in red._   
_I am fading in and out—_   
_What are you gonna do?_   
_Save me now, from this danger?_   
_You don't know how._   
_I'll find my way out when I'm in the red._   
_Listening to strangers inside my head,_   
_The darkening angels beneath the bed._   
_I still see what you said._   
_What are you gonna do?_   
_No way for you to save me._   
  
_\- Sara Bareilles, “Red”_   
  
  


* * *

Chapter Seven: Double Feed

* * *

  
  
_It hurt more than it ought to hurt_   
_I went to work to cultivate a callus_   
_And now I'm hard, too hard to know_   
_I don't cry when I'm sad anymore, no no_   
_Tears calcify in my tummy_   
_Fears go inside a bottle_   
_How can I ask anyone to love me_   
_When all I do is beg to be left alone?_   
  
_\- Fiona Apple, "Left Alone"_   
  
  
  
I stare at the wall.  
  
It’s dark, old fashioned stones like you’d see in a dungeon on TV. But this isn’t TV, this is real life, and her pale, dead flesh haunts my brain. It’s been two weeks, maybe. Three? I’m not sure how long ago I gave up counting the days. Consciousness comes and goes, pushing and pulling me back and forth. Sometimes it feels nice, like a gentle wave lulling me to sleep, and I know my body is telling me to let go, that it’s okay. Let go, little firecracker. Soar through the sky or maybe crash down into flames. I used to be afraid of hell, but not anymore. Compared to here, hell would be a welcome relief.  
  
The rest of the time, the sea is angry and violent, ripping at my soul and pulling me into the undertow, twisting and wrenching, slamming and bending me until I break. I come screaming back to life with every muscle in my body on fire, and each time I disappear in a haze of needles it gets harder and harder to come back.  
  
Vaguely, I can feel the worn straps pinning me in place, but this time the shocks don’t come. The people don’t come. Nothing comes except a steady drip, drip, drip from the IV bag in my arm. I guess it’s keeping me alive in between the rushing heat of the drugs, and I want to pull it out and say goodbye, but I think my drippy friend can read my mind. Every time I manage to raise my arm, the gentle whoosh comes again and pulls at the back of my neck like a magnet until my eyes close.  
  
The clock on the wall tick-tick-ticks away the seconds, blurry and moving backwards sometimes. Back and forth, back and forth. Drip-drip-drip. Tick-tock, tick tock, the mouse ran up the clock.. That’s me, a little mouse, scuttling around, jumping at every noise. No. More like a rat in a cage. Poke me, prick me, cut me, study me. Slice up my brain and figure out where I went wrong. Joke’s on them when they find out that it was all a mistake, me being Chosen. That my calling was a wrong number and there’s nothing to learn here. Just another fucked up piece of trailer trash who stumbled into someone else’s destiny. Faith, Faith the mistake, a mistake since birth. Unwanted, unloved, uncontrolled, undeserving.  


* * *

  
My mom came home drunk one night. Whupped my ass back and forth across the kitchen a few times before the booze sleep hit her and she laid down in front of the fridge. I wiped the blood from my mouth and grabbed her ankles, my scrawny little bird-wings straining and my knobby knees wobbling as I used every ounce of my 9-year-old strength to drag her across the floor.  
  
It was easy enough, really, until the doorway to the living room. The cheap metal plate that held the edge of the carpet down popped beneath her weight and snagged the skirt she was wearing. I tugged her over the threshold and the skirt flipped up over her legs. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and I set her legs down gently, turning my head away in shame. Face burning with humiliation, I un-snagged the skirt and stepped over her lifeless body, grabbing her wrists instead and struggling to turn her in the doorway before resuming the long trek to the couch. I made it, finally, and laid her to rest in front of the couch, knowing there was no way to get her onto it. Instead, I put a blanket over her and draped the excess off the edge of the couch and put a pillow at one end. When she woke up, she’d just think she fell off the couch in her sleep.  
  
I sat down a foot away from her head, curling up into myself and resting my chin on my knees, watching her. Hating her. Missing her. Being scared of her, being scared for her. I wanted someone to come and take me away and at the same time I was terrified that they would.  
  
Tick-tock, tick-tock.  
  
The glowing red digital numbers pushed us unceremoniously and silently into the next hour, and still I waited. I passed the time by imagining all the bloody, awful revenge I would exact on the kids at school, on my mother’s boyfriends, on all the people who had ever hurt us. While my mind swam in pools of blood, relishing every imagined drop, my mother began to wake.  
  
Her mascara was clumped up on her eyelashes and her makeup was smeared around her face and lips. The eyeliner was smudged, accentuating the permanent bags that lived under her eyes. She opened her eyes and it took a minute for hers to find mine. I just sat there, quietly looking back, my chin on one knee and my left hand busy peeling a scab off my other knee.  
  
She coughed a few times before her throat was clear enough to speak, and when she did her voice was hoarse but gentle.  
  
“My little firecracker..”  
  
I _hated_ that gentle voice. I never knew what to expect from it. It might be getting ready to beat me, or to drop me off at the house of some uncle I’d never heard of before that probably wasn’t really my uncle. Or it might want to play Mama. That was the only time I didn’t mind that voice; when it wanted to be my Mama, the nice one, the one that hugged me and colored with me and took care of me.  
  
She slowly sat up, swaying a little, and sat back against the front of the couch, looking at me. She shook her head a little. “Won’t be able to call you that for much longer, will I?”  
  
I lifted my head off my knees, feeling a rush of panic in my heart. That was one of the only good things I had. I was her little firecracker, and it was good, and I didn’t want it to ever go away. “Why not?”  
  
She reached out and cupped my chin, tilting my head up to look at her. “You’re gettin’ to be such a big girl. You’ll be all grown up soon, and you won’t be my little firecracker anymore.” She pulled me into her lap and hugged me. Instinctively, I tensed at first, but quickly whatever anger and resolve I had melted away and, grateful to have this Mama here with me (at least for awhile), I laid my head on her chest and curled up against her.  
  
I felt small in her arms; I felt safe and confined and tiny. Not a firecracker, but a mouse. A meek little mouse, crawling up her Mama. Up the clock, up the walls. Scrambling desperately, trying to cover the distance that always grows between us.  
  
I opened my tiny mouse mouth and I stretched up until my lips reached her ear. I put my hand up against her cheek to keep the secrets from escaping and I whispered, “I’m never gonna be too big to be your little firecracker. Pinkie promise.”  
  
I hooked my skinny little pinkie finger around hers and we kissed our thumbs. I settled against her chest again, and I relaxed.  
  
She rocked me slowly back and forth, the swaying lining up with her heartbeat thudding against my cheek. I closed my eyes, tapping my finger against her chest with the same cadence.  
  
Back and forth, back and forth.  
  
My mother had a beautiful singing voice, something she never shared with anyone but me. Her voice was soft when she started singing, smoothing my hair back from my forehead and rocking me gently.  
  
I drifted off to sleep, feeling safe for the first time in my life.  
  
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me..”  
  
Back and forth, back and forth.  
  
The dungeon walls grow clear again. Footsteps leaving and heavier ones growing closer.  
  
Thud-thud, thud-thud.  
  
Please.. don’t go away, don’t leave me. Stay here and protect me..  
  
Tick-tock, tick-tock.  
  
I’m not done yet. I’m not ready to go. “Time’s up, Faith.”

  
Tick.

Tick.

Tock.

  
We _all_ leave.


	8. Recoil

_In the distance is a line defining where I've been—the state I'm in_  
And ever since it began to slip from my two hands I've been  
Taunting fires, touching wires, been believing liars.  
Everything they said, painted in red.  
I am fading in and out—  
What are you gonna do?  
Save me now, from this danger?  
You don't know how.  
I'll find my way out when I'm in the red.  
Listening to strangers inside my head,  
The darkening angels beneath the bed.  
I still see what you said.  
What are you gonna do?  
No way for you to save me.

_\- Sara Bareilles, “Red”_

 

* * *

 

Chapter Eight: Recoil

* * *

 

 _Nothing really matters in the end you know_  
All the worry is over  
Don't be afraid for me my friend,  
One day we all fall down forever  
And you are not alone, laying in the light  
Put out the fire in your head  
And lay with me tonight

_\- Patti Griffin, “Not Alone”_

 

 

I sit in a hard plastic chair and I wait.

I’m waiting for the same things I always wait for—a twitch, a breath, a groan. I sit and I wait and I watch her try to struggle up into consciousness, and I hope and then I break. The moment her eyes open, her mouth follows suit, and she screams and screams. As if the act of existing itself is too much to bear.

Maybe it is.

As usual, the nurses surge forward into her room like a tide and chaos ensues. Needles and vials and the beeps of machines. And then they stop, and they wait too. They need my permission, and as much as I want her pain to stop, I am a selfish person and I want her to come back to me even more.

I take her bone-white hands in mine and clamp my fingers tightly around her icy ones, and I try to hold back the tears as I say her name softly. I refuse to drown out her screams, and I press her wrists into the pillow on either side of her head, and as she screams in my ear I lower my lips to hers and I whisper her name over and over again, feeling the tears dropping more rapidly off my cheek onto hers.

"Faith. Faith. Come back to me, Faith. You're safe.. I promise you're safe.. Faith.. I'll keep you safe.."

I press my forehead to her temple and I want to scream, myself. I cry instead, my arms clenching her body against mine in a bear hug; holding on for dear life. I press myself to her and I will the life in my body to leave and go into hers instead. I'll trade, I mean it. If anyone's listening, I'll trade. But she just screams, and nobody hears my whispered prayers.

I lift my head a little and I look into her eyes as much as I can, but she doesn't look at me so much as she looks through me.

And she screams.

She doesn't scream words. Every once in a while she screams my name, but mostly she just screams. I search her deep russet eyes, swimming with tears, and I take a breath, steel myself, and nod just a little as I lean back.

The nurses swarm like bees, and her screams die down slowly as she slips back into darkness, slips away from me again.

I watch quietly and, as I always do, I ask the busy white coats if she's in pain. If that's where the screams come from, if the remnants of the council broke her body somehow. One of the nurses, an older woman named Kathryn, sets her wrinkled, papery hand over mine and Faith's, and she squeezes gently. Her eyes are wet too, and it makes me feel a little bit better that there's someone else who cares about Faith, even if she's paid for it.

Kathryn doesn't answer; she doesn't need to. When you're told the person you love has brain damage, it's not something you forget. Of course Faith is in pain. Her body, teeming with extensive scarring, welts, and burns, is also riddled with nerve damage. Even if one day she wakes up without screaming, she'll never come back to me. She'll never walk. She'll never be whole again. They say the word 'hospice' to me a lot, tell me the best thing I can do is make her as comfortable as possible. That she's gone and I have to let go.

Slowly, everyone leaves, the excitement over for the day. I look down at our hands—at Faith's hand clutching mine tightly even in unconsciousness, and I know she's still in there somewhere. I know she's not gone.

And I know I won't let go as long as she doesn't.

I stay next to her, our hands entwined, and I doze off with my head on her hospital bed. I listen to the sounds of the machines that are feeding her and keeping her here, and the rhythmic beeps and pumps lull me into an uneasy sleep.

I dream of laying on a hard cot and watching them take Faith away again. More of them passed each other in the doorway, and I watched as two of them dumped Kennedy's body unceremoniously onto the cold floor a few feet away. I thought she was dead, and then she groaned through a broken jaw, her limbs twisted unnaturally, her body paralyzed—whether from nerve damage or pain, I'll never know—and I wished she was dead. I watched them leave and I listened to Kennedy groan from the rapidly spreading pool of blood she lay in, her voice becoming a gurgle in her throat as her saliva filled her mouth.

I forced myself up as much as possible and moved closer. I could see her eyes register my presence and stare into mine very pointedly before slowly ticking over to the pillow on my cot. I knew what she needed me to do, but I shook my head, told her no. I couldn't. Her eyes pleaded with me silently and with each wet groan that came from her, I felt my stomach pitching harder. Finally I forced my weakened body to stretch and I took the pillow off the cot as I started to cry, leaning over her.

I cupped her cheek gently and I whispered that I would live, that I would leave this place and tell Willow how much she loved her. I promised her I would keep Willow safe, and she looked up at me gratefully for a moment before she closed her eyes, my bloody handprint stamped onto her cheek. My hands shaking, I pressed the pillow tightly over her face. She didn't move, even instinctively, and I held it there and I counted each agonizing second until I was positive.

I pulled the pillow away, and her eyes and cracked lips stayed closed. I pressed my fingers to her neck, feeling for a pulse that wasn't there and never would be again. I leaned in the opposite direction and vomited until there was nothing left inside me.

And then I took the pillow I had just murdered Kennedy with back to my cot, laid down, and sobbed into it.


	9. Headshot

_In the distance is a line defining where I've been—the state I'm in_  
And ever since it began to slip from my two hands I've been  
Taunting fires, touching wires, been believing liars.  
Everything they said, painted in red.  
I am fading in and out—  
What are you gonna do?  
Save me now, from this danger?  
You don't know how.  
I'll find my way out when I'm in the red.  
Listening to strangers inside my head,  
The darkening angels beneath the bed.  
I still see what you said.  
What are you gonna do?  
No way for you to save me.

_\- Sara Bareilles, “Red”_

 

* * *

Interlude: Buffy's Diary

* * *

 

It's hard to write. My body is still weak, and I'm so full of stitched wounds that I'm afraid if even one stitch gives up my whole being will fall apart like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. But Giles thinks it's important for me to write down everything I know, everything I remember, before it fades away.

 It's already getting hard to put the pieces in place. I want to block it all out, and the IV that keeps feeding me morphine makes it easy to let myself float away. But remembering might be the only chance we have of getting Faith back, so I'm going to try. So here's what I know:

  *       The council faked Faith's death. Willow won't ever forgive herself, I don't think. She keeps saying she should have known, should have felt that it wasn't Faith's essence. Several of the girls had gone home for the weekend and only one never made it to her mother's house. Giles had the grave dug up and of course the glamour had faded by then. We had another funeral for Shannon and moved her name from the MIA list to the KIA list.
  *       Once they had Faith, they killed her, thinking they could activate more Slayers the 'natural' way. And when that didn't work, they drugged her. They gave her electroshock "therapy" without sedation. They tortured her. They tore her apart physically and mentally and when she couldn't tell reality from lies anymore, they leaned on her until she broke and gave up Kennedy's name.
  *       We thought the scythe's power was everlasting; that every girl who was born a potential Slayer would be born a Slayer from then on. Giles thinks the Council had reason to believe otherwise; that all of this was to get information about the spell and the scythe and confirm their suspicions that the mass activation was transient, and by extension repeatable as new Potentials entered the world as pink wriggling infants.
  *       I think and Giles agrees, that the Council intended to figure out the ritual, take me out, and build their own army of Slayers. Not necessarily in that order.
  *       I was taken from the cell before they brought Faith back. While they were punishing me for Kennedy's suffering ending faster than Quentin wanted it to, Faith was finding her body, hidden under a glamour. Discovering Faith's body had broken me—but Faith was already broken when she discovered mine.
  *       I am a murderer.



 

I'll never stop seeing Kennedy's face in my dreams. I'll never be able to forget the feeling of her life leaving her body. I know it was an act of mercy and so does Willow, but that doesn't mean much when I still see her blood on my hands.

 It made me realize something I didn't expect, though. It's made me understand Faith a little better. It's given me a glimpse at what she was carrying around on her shoulders even before the Council took her. Even before Sunnydale. Even before she was a Slayer.

 Oddly enough, it made me understand that I'll never fully understand Faith. And maybe if I had just accepted that a long time ago, things could have been very different between us.

 

* * *

 

Chapter Nine: Headshot

* * *

 

 _I was such a fool to hurt you_  
'Cause you're the one I always turn to  
When I'm going out of my mind  
I just bite the hand that feeds me  
Instead of loving ones that need me  
But I want it more this time  
I was wrong. It's hard to say  
At least I learn from my mistakes  
I would change everything

_\- Hedley, Dying to Live Again_

 

I sip the coffee tentatively, but it’s still too hot and it burns the tip of my tongue. Wincing, I set the cup down to let it cool a little more. I get up and check the thermometer in the window before opening it, closing my eyes briefly and smiling when the spring breeze hits my face. There’s still just a touch of cool in the air. Today would be a really good day to do some work in the garden, and I make a mental note to get Faith to come out with me. The rain’s kept us trapped inside for four days already and I can practically feel the caged tiger aura emanating from her.

I check the time and head through the living room towards the bedroom. If I let her, Faith will sleep the whole day away, but she’s got to at least wake up long enough to take her medications.

I head into the bedroom and pause for a minute, looking at her face—peaceful in sleep—and just taking her in. Quietly I sit down on the edge of the bed and brush her dark, wild hair back off her forehead.

 

_Patient has difficulty separating reality from fantasy and is prone to violent outbursts and bouts of rage._

_Patient has a long history of multiple and ongoing traumas._

_Patient is unresponsive to treatment. Recommend sedation._

I did the best I could to piece together what happened. Faith’s frequent freak outs take their toll on both of us, but I’m always careful to listen to what she says between sobs. I write it down, I promise to remember what she can’t anymore. I convince myself that if I know the truth, the whole truth, she’ll come back to me.

In her sleep, she looks like herself. Mouth open slightly, a steady rhythm of snores passing her parted lips.

The day I decided to bring her home was simultaneously uneventful and the most important day of my life. I sat across from her quietly. I used to talk the whole time, but it didn’t seem to matter to her one way or the other. So mostly we just sat with our hands laced together. It took a few months to convince them that I could care for her at home; that residential treatment wasn't going to help her any more than it already had. They said nothing would and I said I didn't care.

An orderly brought her out to my car in a wheelchair, and once he put the brakes on, I thanked him and sent him back inside. As I stood there for a moment, regarding the fragile waif Faith had become as she stared ahead blankly, I realized that I would never let her go again. Whether or not she improved or got worse, she had become mine to take care of the way I should have done from the beginning.

I got her into the car and I drove her home to the spacious but modest single-floor house that would become our home. And when we'd gotten inside and I'd brought her to her bedroom, I squatted down to her eye level. I rested my hand over hers, looking into her distant gaze, and I whispered, "You're home now." And I knew it was finally a promise to her that I wouldn't break.

I shake the memory off and gently rub her arm.

"Faith.. wake up.. Faith.."

Her arm tightens around Mr. Gordo and she buries her face deeper into the pillow, grunting. I can't help but smile. Any day that starts without screams is a good day around here.

Eventually I goad her into opening her eyes, and I swallow hard when they flash with fear before she has a chance to take in her surroundings.

I would give anything to make that look go away forever. Anything to undo what, really, was ultimately my fault.

"You're safe," I tell her, touching my pinkie finger to the tip of my nose. We'd come up with the sign as a joke years ago, sitting in her room at the school, both high as kites. We'd been up all night giggling and having sex in between bong hits and slices of pizza.

"You eat like you were raised by wolves," I'd told her. She'd responded in the worst fake British accent I'd ever heard. I asked her if she was okay.

"Why yes, I'm bloody delightful.. why e'er doest thou ask?" she replied.

"'Cause thou has thy's pinkie on thee's nose, not in the air. Are you.. trying to be British or performing Shakespeare right now?" I'd barely gotten the words out between giggles, imitating her pinkie-to-the-nose gesture.

Somehow over the years it had evolved and become our secret sign for 'I'm okay' or, in her case, 'five by five'.

Her panicked face searches mine for a minute before something clicks and she slowly raises her own pinkie and touches it gently to her nose. Her body unclenches a little bit, and she looks around the room, taking it in section by section, as she always does. I watch her face for a minute as the entire range of emotions passes across it, each in turn.

I let her slowly come back to herself as I dole out her morning medication regiment, lining up the pills from largest to smallest.

She takes me by surprise when she pushes herself into a sitting position despite the pain I know courses through her spine with every move. She reaches out and wraps her thin, cool fingers around my wrist, and for a moment we are reversed. She looks calm and collected, and I am frozen in fear. She's never hurt me during a breakdown—not intentionally anyway; never lashed out at me before. I cringe involuntarily as she glances at the bottle in my hand and the neat little row of pills standing at attention and then slowly lifts her eyes to meet mine.

I look back at her quietly, frozen in a partial flinch but more from conditioning than actual fear, and wait.

Her voice has become more gravelly, the damage done to her vocal chords by months of screaming and more than a few strikes to the jugular is permanent, they say. Her eyes, which usually dart around constantly, are steady and focused on mine.

"Don't." The word is barely audible as it slides out between her lips, and it comes out as more of a plea than a command.

I look at the little drill team of pharmaceuticals, ready to march in perfect formation down her throat. Seroquel, Trazadone, Klonopin, Xanax, Percocet, Skelaxin, Naproxen.. Anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-convulsants, anti-anxieties, anti-inflammatories. Anti-Faiths. She takes 12 different pills multiple times a day. They make her calm, sedate her to sleep, stimulate her to wake up, ease her physical pain. A shot of versed at bedtime so she won't remember her nightmares.

I know better than to fall into trap of believing this will last. Her lucid moments are fleeting, and always feel like a cruel prank from the universe. I try to keep my mind focused on what I know to be true right now: that it's been over a year of occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and neuropsychiatric care. That she's had to re-learn everything from talking to how to walk unassisted. That she still can't tie her shoes.

But she doesn't let go of my arm, and she's still looking into my eyes as her mouth struggles to understand what her brain wants it to do. "Don't.. make.. me.." Her words are slow, but clear as day.

I swallow hard. I don't want to put myself through this again. After the first few months I had to stop hoping and let her go. I had to stop searching for the Faith I missed and learn to love the Faith I have. If I let myself hope this is anything more than a temporary anomaly, I'm going to end up burned and resenting the Faith I have.

She hasn't moved, so I clear my throat. "You.. you don't want your meds?"

She shakes her head almost imperceptibly, pronouncing her words carefully and gesturing at her head slowly. "Makes it.. dark."

I try to hold back the tears, afraid if I upset or scare her, she'll disappear faster. "They.. they're supposed to help.."

With the hand that isn't gripping my arm, she awkwardly shoves the pills off the nightstand. I flinch instinctively, but she doesn't panic or scream. She just stares at me defiantly, like a child who's still reaching for the cookie jar after being told no.

For the first time since the council faked her suicide, Faith's eyes bore into mine, daring me to try to force her.

She's _challenging_ me.

And suddenly I don't care if it breaks me, and I let myself hope.


	10. Epilogue: Safety

_In the distance is a line defining where I've been—the state I'm in_  
_And ever since it began to slip from my two hands I've been_  
_Taunting fires, touching wires, been believing liars._  
_Everything they said, painted in red._  
_I am fading in and out—_  
_What are you gonna do?_  
_Save me now, from this danger?_  
_You don't know how._  
_I'll find my way out when I'm in the red._  
_Listening to strangers inside my head,_  
_The darkening angels beneath the bed._  
_I still see what you said._  
_What are you gonna do?_  
_No way for you to save me._

_\- Sara Bareilles, “Red”_

 

* * *

Epilogue: Safety

* * *

 

 _I just resurfaced and here you are_  
_I must admit that it has been hard so far_  
_I said skeletons are fine, your closet or mine_  
_And we took turns recounting the details of lost time_  
_And when we had both admitted it all_  
_We threw our heads back_  
_And laughed until we cried_  
_We laughed because the world_  
_Is absurd and beautiful and small_

_\- Ani DiFranco, "Small World"_

 

**[Two Years Later]**

 

Sometimes I still wake up screaming, but Buffy never minds. She just rolls over and spreads her arms, and when I curl up against her, she wraps them around me and holds me until I remember I'm safe.

 The hardest part has been training my body to move again. Fingers that once nimbly worked with a stake like it was an extension of myself, now struggle to grip a fork or a pencil. The girl whose body was programmed to dance with darkness is dead now. I left her behind, somewhere in the hell I was reborn from, but I have a hard time mourning her. Honestly, I'm glad she's gone.

 I sit on the porch, enjoying the feel of the sun beating down on my skin, when Buffy gets home from work. She smiles as she gets out of the car and heads over, sitting next to me. My fingers fumble with the lighter in my hand, but Buffy stopped being hypervigilant a long time ago, and she lets me fight with it until I'm rewarded with the whooshing of the flame. I light the joint between my lips and take a few drags, feeling my body start to loosen up as I do.

 The weed helps. It tones down the tremors and keeps the memories at bay. I pass her the joint and she breathes the smoke out slowly, reclining against the stairs next to me and rubbing my thigh lightly with her free hand.

 We don't speak. We just sit in a kind of silence you can only find with someone who understands how ugly you are inside and wants to sit with you anyway. Probably because now we have the same ugly inside. Sometimes she wakes up screaming, too.

 I don't think we'll ever be okay, either of us. But once we stopped trying to be, we were able to start trying to live instead. We take each day as it comes, screams and all. Sometimes I need the pain to remind me that I'm alive, but it happens less and less and I find myself reaching for her instead of a blade more and more.

We stay there, watching the sun set. And for the first time in my entire life, I think about it rising again and bringing a new day with it, and I'm not scared.

I reach out and slowly take her hand in mine as the sun sinks out of sight.

And I smile.

 

 

_Well the sun rose, with so many colors it nearly broke my heart_   
_It worked me over like a work of art and I was a part of all that_   
_So go ahead, push your luck, say what it is you gotta say to me_   
_We will push on into that mystery_   
_And it'll push right back_   
_And there are worse things than that_   
_'Cause for every price, and every penance that I could think of_   
_It's better to have fallen in love than never to have fallen at all_   
_'Cause when you live in a world, well it gets into who you thought you'd be_   
_And now I laugh at how the world changed me_   
_I think life chose me after all_

_\- Dar Williams, "After All"_


End file.
